US software designers and tech workers take a pledge to refuse creation of databases for government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin

[A shinning example of socially concerned new working class. Hundreds of Tech workers in the US pledge not to help create databases for retention of data based on race, religion, nationality etc to target them for possible deportations. Hoping tech workers from South Asia with join them ... read the pledge below]

Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them. —Sarah Kendzior [1]

We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past—among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes.

Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again.

We commit to the following actions:

We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.

We will advocate within our organizations:

to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting.

to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data.

to responsibly destroy high-risk datasets and backups.

to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible.

to demand appropriate legal process should the government request that we turn over user data collected by our organization, even in small amounts.

If we discover misuse of data that we consider illegal or unethical in our organizations:

We will work with our colleagues and leaders to correct it.

If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users.

If we have the authority to do so, we will use all available legal defenses to stop these practices.

If we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply.

We will raise awareness and ask critical questions about the responsible and fair use of data and algorithms beyond our organization and our industry.

Note: Signatories’ references to affiliated organizations below are for identification purposes and are not intended to imply an endorsement by the organization.

Signed,

Aaron Becker, Google

Aaron Brethorst

Aaron Couch, DKAN

Aaron Cowdin, DevOps, PrensenceLearning, Inc.

Aaron Crespo, Engineer, third generation holocaust survivor

Aaron Gee-Clough

Aaron Kraus, Reciprocity, Inc.

Aaron L. Sullivan, Software Developer

Aaron Petcoff, The New Yorker

Aaron Ringgenberg, DevOps Engineer, Patreon

Aaron Smith, DevOps Engineer, Civis Analytics

Abbas Manjee, Chief Academic Officer, Kiddom

Adam Alpern

Adam Bender, Senior Software Engineer, Google

Adam C. Foltzer, Galois

Adam Glasgall, Akamai

Adam Harvey, New Relic

Adam Herzog, Trifork

Adam Jones, Director of Technology Nerdery Chicago

Adam Thomason, Fastly

Adam Wright, Branch Metrics

Adarsh Jupudi, Cloud Architect, Datacom

Aditya Naik, Android Developer

Adnan Alam, IT @ GitHub

Ahmed Sharaf

Aidan Fitzgerald, Cornell University

Aki Rose Braun, Programmer, PayPal/Venmo

Akil Harris, First Look Media

Akiva Leffert

Alaina Hardie, Singularity University, Precision Nutrition

Alan McConchie, Stamen Design

Alana Hanson, Leapfrog Online

Albert Bodenhamer, Engineering Manager for Chrome OS UI, Google

Alberto Burlacu

Alec Perkins

Alek Dembowski, Software Engineer, Google

Alesandro Ortiz, Software Engineer

Alex Baldwin, Poncho

Alex Broque, Sr. Network Engineer, Hurricane Electric

Alex Cook, Software Engineer (Part-time Thought Leader)

Alex Jarvis, Developer

Alex Rudnick, software engineer, Google

Alexandra Hrefna Hilmisdóttir

Alexandra Savas, Product Marketing Manager

Alexis Christoforides, Microsoft

Alfred Ababio, Software Engineer

Ali Afshar

Alice Boxhall, Software Engineer, Google

Alice Rhomieux, Software Engineer, Google

Alison Buki, Developer/Designer

Alison Hodges, Founder, Erlea Documentation Professionals

Allele Dev, Simple

Allen Lai, Plaid

Allison Clift-Jennings, CEO, Filament

Alyssa Kwan, Analytics Engineering Lead, Clara Lending

Alyssa Wright, President of OpenStreetMap US and Vice President of Partnerships at Mapzen